Digital Britain: a revolution for UK internet users?

After months of anticipation, communications minister Lord Carter's Digital Britain report was finally released to the masses yesterday. Although there were few surprises - the interim report released in January had many industry commentators prepared for what was to come - the revelations have created debate concerning the effectiveness of the proposals and whether or not they will really achieve the government's digital inclusions goals.
The report's main points include a minimum 2MB broadband connection for all households by 2012, a speed that Lord Carter has called "a technological minimum wage". While this objective has been public for some time, the report also revealed that the government hopes to levy a 50p per month 'broadband tax' on all households, in order to pay for the rollout of next-generation broadband.
In addition, internet service providers in Britain will be required to cut illegal file sharing on their networks by 70 per cent in the next 12 months. Analogue radio will be phased out and replaced exclusively by digital stations by the end of 2015 and, while there were some fears that Channel 4 and Five would be merged together, the report's conclusions instead will give 4 financial assistance from the government in order to create a joint venture with BBC Worldwide.
But what does the Digital Britain report mean for online advertising and the search industry? The effects will be made clearer when - and if - the proposals start rolling out over the next few years but initially, wider broadband coverage clearly indicates a broader market for advertisers. According to the report 2.75 million homes, around 11 per cent of households, in the UK do not have access to a broadband connection of 2Mbps. What's more, the prospect of superfast broadband speeds could also mean the potential for more advertising exposure - i.e., as internet connections get faster, users can carry out more searches and visit more sites in an hour then they would previously have been able to.
And while Google - a company that's been integral to the development of the digital landscape in the UK - isn't the focus of the document's proposals, it certainly makes its presence felt throughout the report. Lord Carter's introduction starts off by highlighting the huge amount of activity that takes place on Google and YouTube every day and uses the firm's massive growth over the last ten years as an example of how far the digital economy has come in the 21st century.
It also seems that Google has been taking many steps to keep the government on-side. For starters, it has joined the Ofcom-led Consortium of Stakeholders to drive Digital Participation, along with AOL and Yahoo!. This super-group will have £12 million of funding available to them over three years to facilitate this goal. What's more, Mountain View has also signed up to the Broadband Stakeholders' Group's Audiovisual Content Information Good Practice Principles, which aims to provide "clear, consistent information about commercially-provided audiovisual content". Other signatories include AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, BBC, Channel 4, Five, ITV and Microsoft.
But it's not all good feeling between Google and Westminster. In the report's discussions of digital security and assurance, it cites Google Streetview as a key point of consumer concern over online privacy. How the future of this service will play out as the government seeks to take steps to address these worries is still to be seen, but it seems unlikely that it will move towards a total shutdown as seen in Greece - particularly since the report also states that the Space Innovation and Growth team will start cataloguing satellite data collected by Google Earth.
While the Digital Britain proposals have been welcomed by some and criticised by others, what really stands out is that nothing is yet certain. The objectives lined out in the document have yet to be agreed upon so whether any of them will come into being remains unsure. However, even if its most basic goals - like broadband for all - are approved, the implications for the digital economy, and therefore online advertising and search, are sure to be significant.

by Search Copywriter
Y. Sulaiman

Gabor Keller - DandyID

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DandyID provides a set of tools that help you to collect, manage, and own your online identity.

Just like what defines you in the offline world is a collection of the things you do, the people you interact with, and the places you go, your online self is a collection of the things you do and the people you meet across the web. Unfortunately because the web is so big, that identity is usually scattered around a bunch of different sites that don't always communicate with one another. DandyID helps you bring together all the pieces that make up the real you, and share the bits you want to share.

DandyID launched publicly in April of 2008 by co-founders Sara Czyzewicz, Arron Kallenberg and Anthony Dimitre (read more about our team here).

This is Me on Dandy: Gabor Keller - DandyID

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Gumblar, Google is depending on the virus

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More recently visited the online world, the news that a virus will change to Google's search results and sites contaminated with lead unsuspecting Internet.

The operation of a pest Gumblar student named briefly as follows: out-of-date Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF Reader) or Adobe Flash Player (media player) safety programs through the crevices into the user's computer, which then tries to collect the passwords stored on the Internet and used.

If they get in a number of Internet web site operating server, you can infect everything he can. It aims to install the downloaded code itself, which is to extend itself further, and is likely to be infected machine it will be the "background" is a network of PCs so that they may not know what the owners.

In addition to computers, you have already installed the Google search results list will be updated as: web pages are the first places in which new viruses, spyware or ad-collecting in the unsuspecting user.

The system continuously monitors the web pages stored in it "purity", and thus indicates to you if something is wrong in the face. If you do not have nuclear-defense system on your computer, do not click on such links, since the pests are usually slipped into the machine, so that you do not buy it.

It is therefore important to pay attention to this virus, since the number of infected Web sites is increasing. Of course, the owners of these servers also act to control, and this record has been made, but also very much depends on the users. In addition to regularly update and run anti-virus software should be, we must pay attention to the above-mentioned programs are updated.

The virus hunter's proposal for new users:
Every day, faced with the problem that the news reports, almost without thinking to take over the Google-related news, it does not say anything useful.

The initial users of the primary, I propose that if such a reading news, you can begin your search for more specific descriptions, solutions. Because, although they exist only to be found.
Gumblar name of the worm have the option of about 1 year. In addition, easy, two applications should be updated to the current version.

One of the worldwide spread, everyone is familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and the other is required to play the online video, Adobe Flash Player.

In the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Pdf format documents can be read easily, the Adobe Flash Player is integrated into the browser, and the purpose of which is to be found on the web video, we can smoothly and safely.

I know it's a start, perhaps even for the Chinese, but the computer is: Yesterday is not yet understood, it is now used, could be tomorrow that I teach!

Google/Twitter partnership seems closer than ever

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Twitter's profile is continuing to skyrocket as more and more individuals and businesses take advantage of its attractive micro-blogging platform (including ourselves, find bigmouthmedia on Twitter). Consequently, search experts are probing the effect its real-time search function will have on Google's dominance. And, following the recent integration of Twitter Search with user profiles and the unveiling of some would say superior Twitter search service Twazzup, it's perhaps only a matter of time until the two connect their operations in some way.

Earlier this month, more Google-Twitter acquisition rumours surfaced when Marissa Mayer said that Google was interesting in offering "micro-blogging or micro-messaging" in its search services. But it's yesterday's admission from Google CEO Eric Schmidt that Google would work to index Twitter updates without outright buying the company that is perhaps the closest that the search engine has come to saying that an agreement could be forged between the two.
Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference, he said: "We can talk to them ... there is all sorts of stuff we can do. We do not have to buy everybody to work with them, the whole principle of the web is people can talk to each other."

Interestingly, Google co-founder Larry Page also admitted that that his brainchild had been losing out to Twitter over the last 12 months. In a closing address at Google Zeitgeist, he said: "People really want to do stuff real time and I think they [Twitter] have done a great job about it. I think we have done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis."

The statements from Schmidt and Page come just a week after Google's Searchology 2009 event, a platform that many pundits felt the search engine would use to announce a real time search alternative to Twitter. However, the unveiling of its new Search Options feature - which allows users to filter search results by the time in which they were indexed, among other things - was seen by many experts not to have gone far enough to counter Twitter's unique real time search facility.

Google's assertion that it does not have to buy Twitter to work with it is sure to please many die-hard Twitter fans - particularly after Google's Friday outage, which has many worried about Google's ability to cope with downtime.
What's more, anyone that has been with Twitter since its early days in 2006 will no doubt remember the fallout from Google's 2007 purchase of micro-blogging site Jaiku. The website, seen as a real rival to Twitter at the time, was effectively neglected by the search engine for over a year after the purchase before eventually handing over its development to volunteers in January 2009, and leaving many Jaiku users defecting to Twitter in the intervening period.

However, on Google's side, indexing Twitter updates will always run the risk of returning irrelevant results, though that is something the search engine has acknowledged. But any partnership between the two that can help Google return faster and more relevant results without sacrificing Twitter's independence to the Mountain View empire has to be of benefit to global internet users.

by Search Copywriter
Y. Sulaiman

1989-2009: 20 years of Liberty!

Image by crankyshooter1 via Flickr

The Berlin Wall - to the rest of the world - is the symbol of the division of Europe. Its not what ended communism. Its not what started the collapse of communism. It is purely the symbol of a divided Europe!

The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google

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I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.
Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:

• 
  
  Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
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  Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.

Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

by Mike Masnick

My Page - Free document publishing for Ning networks

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Gabor Keller's Page on Free document publishing for Ning networks and the Web

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